4th of July and much more!

For the 4th, we headed to Bend to spend it with Jim's parents. On the morning of the 4th, we went downtown for the Pet Parade and while walking along the sidewalk, Lexie tripped over her own two feet and fell on her arm. Being the fantastic mother that I am, I just told her to calm down and nothing was really wrong and she would be okay. However, she kept crying about it through the whole parade and for quite awhile afterward, so I thought we had better take her to the urgent care. Turns out, she broke her arm. She had her bone set in the surgery center 5 days after she broke it and is now in her beautiful cast decorated with lots of signatures from family and friends. She will be in the cast for 3 more weeks and then they will take it off. I was really expecting the first broken bone in the family to come from the trampoline or something more exciting than just tripping on the sidewalk! :)Here she is with her cast. She hasn't complained at all about having to wear it. Amazing!

I thought I'd get a close-up of it so you could see some of the names.

I had to take this picture of Jim throwing "flowers" when we let off fireworks in front of the house. He was throwing 2 at a time and he did it with such flair!

The day we came home from Bend, which was July 5, my mother, my sister, Natalie and her two daughters, Hannah and Madeleine, came to visit us for the week. We had a great time together. Kenedy was born on Natalie's birthday, July 7, so we were able to celebrate their birthdays together. I think about half of Kenedy's birthdays have been spent with Aunt Natalie. Pretty cool. I ended up taking pictures of the festivities with Natalie's camera, so no pics of that day. On Wednesday, the 9th, my brother Mike, his wife Debi and their kids Jarrett and Valerie came to visit for the day. They live in Chicago and we don't see them very often. It was good to visit with them for a little while. Plans are in the works for Jim and me to make a trip to Chicago in September to see them. I can't wait. They had to head back to Salt Lake on Thursday morning to catch their flight to Chicago on Friday. I'm so glad they were able to come see us for the day.

This is Cooper saying goodbye to Hannah as they were about to head out.

My mom and Natalie left on Friday, July 11 and that night, Jim's sisters Jill and Kim came to visit. They brought Jill's kids Conner, Mckay and Maddie, Kim's son Sully and Jana's son Tyler. They stayed with us for the weekend and we had a really good visit with them. We were able to slip-n-slide in the church yard on Saturday afternoon and it was a blast. Lexie even slid, cast and all. I'm pretty adventuresome, but I was really nervous about Lexie going down the waterslide with a broken arm. I was afraid she would break her other arm in the process. She survived and had a great time with her cousins. Jill, Kim and the kids left on Monday afternoon. It was really fun to see them. I wish we could all get together more often.!

Hallie and Cooper
Sully
Conner

Lexie, with a big bag on her cast.

Sully and Mckay

Maddie

Conner and Haden

Kenedy on her knees

Haden in motion
Jim and Coop

Lexie's birthday was this past Tuesday, July 22. She turned 5. I bought a coupon for a "Best Friends's party for Two" from a little kids salon and spa called Monkey Dooz. So, I took her and her friend Emma Matheson to the salon after lunch to have their party. They started off putting on princess dress-up clothes, had their hair done in a princess up do, then had their nails painted and sparkly makeup put on. They finished off with a dish of sherbet and a glass of punch. They were so cute the whole time. Lexie kept telling Emma that she looked so pretty and she kept saying, "This is the best day ever!" They had a great time and they were totally in their element--princesses being pampered. That night, we went out to Red Robin as a family and then came home to open presents and eat cake and ice cream. It was a really fun day.

Lexie and Emma getting their hair done.
Time for the nails and makeup!


Sipping a nice cool drink with a dish of ice cream.

Two beautiful Princess!

Just a few things

It seems that the end of school year tends to be just as crazy as the beginning. A lot has been going on lately and I just want to post some pictures.

Lexie finished her 2nd year of preschool. She is off to Kindergarten next year. It's hard to believe that she is almost 5 years old. She's a sweet little girl and I'm so proud of her. The preschool always has an "End of the year Show". The kids sing a few songs together and the teachers give each of the kids "open mic" time where they get to do whatever they want at the microphone. They can sing a song, dance, tell a joke, or whatever. She decided to tell a joke. Last year she froze when she got up there and I was expecting the same this year, however, she told her "knock, knock" joke and it was really cute.

Here she is the night of the show. I felt really bad for her because she had spent the four days

before this throwing up and hadn't eaten very much at all. She was a trooper, however, and it was a fun show.

Lexie and all her classmates

I have to post a picture of our new trampoline. It's pretty cool. Jim, a friend of his and I spent a good amount of our Saturday a couple week ago putting it together. The kids love the trampoline.

We decided it was about time to paint Haden and Cooper's room. Haden picked out the colors blue and orange for his room. Jim and I were able to pick out two nice shades of those colors from the quilt on his bed. I'm really happy with it. Now, we need to get some cool pictures to put on the wall to bring it to life even more. Jim does all the painting in our house and I have to give him props for the awesome job he did!

Haden's birthday was on the 5th of June, just this last week. We had good time celebrating his birthday. He chose Red Robin as the place he wanted to go to dinner, so we went there on Friday night. He was really cute when they sang to him. The waiter asked him how the song was and he said, "Totally cool" with the cutest little smile on his face. I wish I had the camera for that picture. Then, we came home and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. He had never seen it and he's totally into Indiana Jones for some reason. I had gotten him an Indiana Jones cake also, so it was a good choice of movie. It was really fun. He's such a good kid. He's so funny and clever. He just cracks us up all the time. He's also the type to just say whatever he is thinking, so you better watch out. I have seen lately, though, that he's learning how to edit what's he's thinking before he says it. At least a little bit! Happy 7th Birthday, Haden. We sure love you.

Cruise?????

On May 9, we started a journey that was to take us to Venice, Italy to start an amazing Mediterranean cruise with Jim's parents, his sister Jill and her husband, Jeff. It's amazing what a little bit of bad weather can do to thwart such grand plans. Though the journey was not at all what we expected, it was a journey to remember none the less. Well, maybe we will just try to forget it.

Jim's parents came to Richland on the 8th so that we could fly out of Pasco early Friday morning. We left bright and early on Friday the 9th at 6:00 a.m. Jim's dad started the day off having security do an extra check with the "wand" before we got on the plane.

We arrived in Denver at 9:00 a.m. and our connection flight to Philadelphia was to leave at 10:13 a.m. When we got off the plane and were looking for the gate our plane would be leaving from, we noticed that our plane was delayed 1 hour. This wasn't a big deal since we had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Philadelphia and would still have time to make our connection there to Venice. After the hour delay was almost up, we looked at the board again and realized they were delaying the flight another hour. At this point, Jim got on the phone and tried to find out if there were any other flights leaving sooner that we could get on. He found one that was in another terminal in the Denver airport that was leaving very soon. We had to book it over to the other terminal to see if we could catch this flight. As we were running to get there, we saw the plane pull away from the gate and head for the runway. We just didn't have enough time. Apparently, there was some pretty bad weather going on in Philadelphia and planes were being delayed and cancelled all day long. Our only option at this point was to get on our original flight and hope that they would delay the flight to Venice by a couple hours. When we got back to our original gate, the flight had been delayed another 45 minutes totalling an almost 3 hour delay. We were hoping for a miracle.

We made it to Philadelphia finally, 3 hours later than expected, and our plane to Venice was not delayed and left without us. Jim's sister and brother-in-law had made it on time and were on the plane without us. So, we decided we needed to find out if there were any other flights that could get us to Venice in time to board the boat the next day at 4 p.m. A 6 hour time difference between the east coast and Venice does not make this an easy task. Jim, bless his heart, did a lot of searching for a flight that would help us get close. After about 3 hours of running to catch this flight or that and trying to work out some way to get to our cruise ship, we decided that it was time to just turn around and go home. When the International terminal in a major airport doesn't even know what or where the country Croatia is, you know you've got a problem.

Here we are after we made the decision to get a flight back home the next day. We were pretty tired and defeated.

We worked with the US Airways customer service people for almost 2 hours to get us a hotel room and some food vouchers and then decided we should see if they had our checked luggage downstairs. Jim went back and forth from the US Airways and United baggage counters 4 times with each of them saying the other had our luggage before someone finally just helped him file a claim to just make sure we got our luggage sent home to us as soon as possible. Jim was the one handling all of this and was amazingly calm with all of the people in the Philadelphia airport who weren't all that helpful.

On a bright note, we did get this fabulous picture of me with the Liberty Bell. Oh, wait. It's in the Philadelphia airport and it's made out of Legos. I guess I'll have to see the original another time.

Our flight was to leave on Saturday morning at 10:00 am, so we got to the airport at about 7:30 am to get checked in and get our boarding passes. While we were waiting in line, Jim's mother said she felt like she was going to faint and didn't have any strength in her legs. Jim helped her get over to some chairs to sit down and the airport staff called an ambulance. When the paramedics got there, they took her blood pressure and found that it was 190. They felt that it was too high and suggested that she go to the hospital and get checked out to make sure she was okay. So, we all piled into an ambulance and headed for the hospital, carry-0n luggage and all. I was able to sit up front and talk with one of the paramedics who told me a little bit about Philly. Both paramedics were so nice to us and trying to do whatever they could to help us out. We spent about 5 hours at the hospital where some tests were run that did not find anything serious wrong with her. We are so thankful for that. They wanted to keep her in the hospital over the weekend, but Jim's dad did not think it was necessary and decided to just get home and see a doctor to follow up as soon as possible.

Jim's mother in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Jim's dad was able to take a much needed nap while we were in the hospital waiting on test results.

After Shirlee was released from the hospital, we headed back to the airport to change our flight once again and figure out how to get home. We missed the original flight for Saturday and unfortunately, there is only one flight per day that goes from Denver to Pasco, so there wasn't another flight that would get us to Denver in time to catch the connection to Pasco. So, we booked a flight to leave Philly at 10 am on Sunday and arrive in Denver at noon. The only flight out on Sundays to Pasco leaves at almost 9 pm. So, we were looking at a 9 hour layover in the lovely Denver airport. Happy Mother's Day!

We booked a couple rooms at the Comfort Inn just a couple miles away from the airport and headed there to check in. We arrived at the hotel at about 5:30 pm and were greeted by Darleen. Let's just say Darleen needs to work on her customer service skills. She acted like we were a nuisance and was so annoyed that she had to deal with us.
This is Darleen. She won't be winning any customer service awards, that's for sure.

We decided to rest for awhile an then have dinner somewhere. There were just a couple of options and the best one was Denny's. So, we got all dressed up in our finest, at least the finest that we had in our carry-on bags and went to dinner. It was actually a better dinner than I was expecting, although not even close to what we would have gotten on the cruise.

We had our waitress take a picture of the four of us and as you can see, she cut Jim off. We noticed and asked her to try again and this second picture is what we got.

She almost got it right! :)

Well, we arrived home after a long Sunday at the Denver airport, at about 11:30 pm. Surprise, surprise, the flight from Denver was delayed by about 45 minutes. Not the greatest of trips to say the least and we're all pretty sad that we didn't get to see all the wonderful places along the Mediterranean. We'll try it again some other time.

My brother Paul

On Sunday, April 13 my brother, Paul, passed away at his home in Idaho Falls, ID. He was 39 years old and severely autistic. I was able to spend the week with my mom and dad and my siblings to say goodbye and spend some time talking about our memories of him that we will cherish. Because of the limitations of his disabled body, his life was a challenge and I'm grateful that he is able to be free of those limitations and live with our Heavenly Father again. He is at peace and he is whole again. I will, however, really miss seeing him. Although he didn't say much, I always loved how he greeted me. He usually just said my name and shook my hand. In the last few years, he would allow me to give him a hug. It was always very interesting to see what he had written on the papers that he always carried around. He would write down the things that he wanted or the places that he wanted to go and show it to all of us. Some of his favorite places were West Yellowstone, Jackson, Tri-Cities. He loved rootbeer and candy bars. A lot of times, we didn't see much emotion from Paul, but when we saw him truly happy, it was really beautiful. He had his certain things that he would say to certain people and we knew that there were some people he truly connected with. I love him very much and look forward to the time when I can see him again and talk with him. He is truly a very special son of God.

I was especially touched by the people who cared for Paul while he was in the group home. They were so loving and had so many wonderful things to say about him. It was amazing to see their outpouring of love for him. I'm so grateful for those amazing people that were willing to be Paul's second family.

To my wonderful and amazing parents--There are no two people who could have been better parents to Paul than you have been. He loved you so much and he knew that you loved him. You showed him in everything that you sacrificed and did for him. You have an amazing strength that is such an example to me. Our entire family has been blessed by that strength. I love you both very much.

Carmichael Spirit Week, 80's Day

It's Spirit Week this week at Carmichael Middle School where Kenedy is in 6th grade. Today is 80's day. So, we had fun last night putting together a great 80's costume and this morning doing her hair up 80's style. The only thing that would have made her hair better would have been if she had a perm like all of us did in the 80's! :-) She looked great when she walked out the door this morning. We were looking through one of my High School year books last night and wow, there was some big hair back then! It's fun to look back! I thought I'd post a picture of myself when I was 15 in 1989, just for fun. I couldn't find the one I really wanted to show, but this will do. My bangs were famous back then. They didn't ever move! ;-)

Easter and Kenedy's first Choir Concert

We had a wonderful Easter this year. We colored eggs on Saturday night to set out for the Easter Bunny to hide Sunday morning and then had the hunt after breakfast on Sunday. It's always fun for the kids to hunt for eggs. I think we even found all of them this year so we won't come upon some rotten egg in the yard a month from now. We go to church at 1pm this year, so it was nice not to have to rush to get ready. Primary, however, was a little bit wild. The kids in Junior Primary were totally wired. I wish I had a picture of Alexis that day. She was squirming in her seat like I have never seen her before. Wow!

Kenedy had her first Choir Concert on Thursday night. She did a really good job and there were some fun songs presented. I think she was reluctant to sing in the choir at the beginning of the year, but she said she would be in the choir next year, so that's a step in the right direction. I loved singing in the choir and I hope she will continue on. She has a beautiful voice and I hope she continues to share it.